The PROFMUS project presents the Exhibition “TO BE A MUSICIAN IN PORTUGAL (1750-1985)”, since 2 July to 6 November 2022 at the Museu da Música Portuguesa - Casa Verdades de Faria (Monte Estoril).
This is a pioneering exhibition which brings together a selection of documents and other valuable pieces of great historical interest from the archives of the Irmandade de Santa Cecília and Montepio Filarmónico, both located at Basílica dos Mártires (Chiado, Lisbon), and the Historical Archive of the Portuguese Musicians' Union preserved at the Museu da Música Portuguesa - Casa Verdades de Faria.
This exhibition will bring to the public for the first time an extraordinary documental corpus kept in these collections, which is an essential source for the history of music in Portugal between the end of the Ancien Regime (when there is a growth in the musical associativism of Portuguese musicians) until the integration of Portugal in the EEC (1985), and the consequent beginning of the free circulation of music professionals in the European labour market.
Documenting and bringing to light how these associations and musicians organised themselves professionally over this long period is a way to stimulate new insights into the conditions of everyday musical activity in Portugal, an immaterial and rich historical heritage which must be preserved, studied and safeguarded.
The exhibition "To Be a Musician in Portugal (1750-1985)" is produced and curated by the researchers Cristina Fernandes, Manuel Deniz Silva and Tiago Manuel da Hora, and is dedicated to the memory of Francesco Esposito (1964-2020), musicologist and one of the main driving forces behind the PROFMUS project.
